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One link after another led me to seductive silk dresses, glamorous diamond bracelets, and impractical but adorable handbags.
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A beautiful body suit with cut-outs and eye-catching embroidery at the hem of the bootcut legs.
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Red pointed-toe pumps with polished gold heels carved into the silhouette of a single-stemmed rose.
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Lipstick the same color as the shoes.
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A fully laced housecoat with a dramatic train and drooping sleeves.
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“I like a woman who doesn’t deny herself the luxuries of life.”
Startled, I panicked and hit the back button.
Back, back, back, back, back. Erase the evidence! My phone returned to my Instagram feed, immediately refreshing and popping to the top of the page as I looked over my shoulder and up at a man hovering behind me.
Storm Thornton.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to tell if my cheeks were red from the embarrassment of being caught in the middle of my shopping addiction or from the cold, I smiled. “I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to sit here comfortably without interruption. Can I help you with something, Mr. Thornton?”
“I thought we’d covered this. Storm is fine.”
“Is it short for something? I’ve always wondered.”
Storm’s lips, already pursed in a sexy smirk, twitched with amusement in the corners as he fought to maintain his façade of cool, suave sophistication. “No, unfortunately not.”
“Unfortunately?”
He chuckled. “My mother actually had more outlandish names, but she worked her way down to Storm, somehow successfully convincing—or more accurately, manipulating—my father into believing it wasn’t a strange name at all.”
“Your mother sounds like the sort of woman I’d get along with nicely.”
“She’d have disappointed you.”
I blinked. What a strange thing to say about a person’s deceased mother. “Oh.”
He nodded at the chair across from me beneath the heater. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Can I say no to the CEO?”
Storm undid his suit jacket before easing gracefully into his chair, draping himself over it with the sort of confidence only held by a man who knew exactly how handsome he was. His classically handsome face made him look like the sort of man who belonged on the cover of a GQ magazine, with his sharp jawline and symmetrical features. Green eyes burned under thick dark brows. His hair, sheepishly pushed back, was a few days shy of needing a trim.
“You could say no, but what’s the fun in that?” His gaze flicked to the phone in my hand. “You should order the red shoes.”
“I have no occasion to wear them.”
“Dinner with me would be a more than suitable occasion.”
“Smooth.”
He leaned sideways and draped an arm over the back of his chair. “Is that a yes?”
“I don’t need a new pair of shoes. Besides, I was shopping to kill time. I had no intention of actually buying.”
A flat-out lie but a vague enough, no thanks, I don’t want to date the CEO of my modeling agency. Talk about complicated, messy, and a recipe for an online scandal.
The funny thing was the audacity of him asking me out annoyed me less than the comment about my shopping. I like a woman who doesn’t deny herself the luxuries of life. Storm might have made it sound like a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one. It hung in the back of my head like a taunt, reminding me that Storm wasn’t the only person who thought I had a spending problem. In fact he was using my spending problem to land a date with me.
That was a new one.
People on comment sections liked to call me names when the paparazzi released photos of my shopping sprees. They called me vain. Shallow. A rich brat. Spoiled.
Maybe they were right.
I shifted in my seat and my robe slid away from my thigh, exposing plenty of bare leg.
Storm did his best not to look, and failed. His green gaze slid to my bare thigh, and I, being the tease I was, uncrossed my legs just to recross the other one over before hiding them under the robe.
He cleared his throat. “If you don’t buy the shoes, at least buy the dress.”
The man had no boundaries.
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Do you want to say something to me?” he asked.
“I want to say a few things.”
“Go for it. You’re Laila Hunt. If anyone has job security, it’s you.”
“I don’t think a trust-fund kid who’s never worked for any of his success should tell a stranger how to spend their hard-earned money.” The word vomit happened before I even realized I’d spoken. My stomach fell out of my asshole and the place where it used to be turned cold. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“And here I thought Jennika was the meanest girl I knew.”
Desperate to be saved from this distraction, I pretended something interesting had happened on my phone and looked down. Miraculously, there was something there to see that hadn’t been there minutes before—a picture of my baby sister, wearing my new clothes from last night’s shopping spree, taken in front of my bedroom’s full-length mirror. The clothes were too big for her. The shoulder straps hung, and the neckline drooped, exposing plenty of boob and a peek-a-boo of her sparrow tattoo under her collarbone.
“Brat,” I hissed.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I’m the only one here.”
“Do you always have a smartass response to everything?”
He grinned. “Only with some people.”
Right when I started plotting my escape, one of the other models came hurrying over to me. She put her cheek to mine and whispered in my ear that she was having an emergency and needed a tampon. Sometimes I didn’t appreciate being the girl everyone went to for help all the time, but today, I was more than happy to abandon my chair and stand up.
“Although this has been fun,” I said through my teeth, faking a smile at Storm, “duty calls.”
“See you around, Laila Hunt.”
I hope not too often.
CHAPTER 7
STORM
Women never turned me down when I asked them out.
And when I say never, I’m not using it casually. I’m not a lactose intolerant person who never eats cheese, except on holidays and weekends when someone shows up with expensive brie. I’m not a workout junkie who never misses a chance to pump iron. I’m not the guy who never shows up late to work. Of course, I do.
But women simply did not turn me down. Rejection was not a comfortable or familiar feeling.
It never happened to me.
And Laila Hunt?
Well shit. She’d shot me down like I was some annoying frat boy buzzing in her ear instead of me, Storm Thornton. I could have bought her anything her little heart desired from the designer shop she was perusing. I could have ordered custom anything to make her smile. But in her eyes, I was chopped liver.
“Stings, doesn’t it?” Jennika fell into the chair Laila had vacated fifteen minutes earlier. Since her departure, I’d been replaying our encounter over in my head, wondering where it all went to shit and why I was still sitting here feeling like a fifteen-year-old boy who’d just watched his crush walk off with the cool eighteen-year-old who drove a restored mustang to and from school.